Terroir :)

 

Like beer and wine, two entities yours truly loves, along with chocolate, of course, would never be as wonderful as they are without fermentation, the secret sauce needed to make the big three as good as they truly are.

Whether baked as chips into a cookie, melted into a sweet warm drink or molded into the shape of a smiling bunny, chocolate is one of the world’s most universally consumed foods.

Even the biggest chocolate lovers, though, might not recognize what this ancient food has in common with kimchi and kombucha: its flavors are due to fermentation. That familiar chocolate taste is thanks to tiny microorganisms that help transform chocolate’s raw ingredients into the much-beloved rich, complex final product.

Cacao is a wild fermentation – farmers rely on natural microbes in the environment to create unique, local flavors. This phenomenon is known as “terroir”: the characteristic flair imparted by a place. In the same way that grapes take on regional terroir, these wild microbes, combined with each farmer’s particular process, confer terroir on beans fermented in each location.

Read the detailed Conversation piece to see just how involved it is to create chocolate, the exquisite treat like no other.